It was the free labor of enslaved Africans that built America’s agricultural economy. These marginalized Americans rarely get credit for the knowledge, ingenuity and invention they brought to the table in food and agriculture. Names of enslaved cooks who invented dishes were routinely left out of cookbooks, many of their owners taking credit for their recipes and innovations. However, these counternarratives are finally being brought to light as many historic sites open their archives to the lives of their former enslaved populations. We know locally from letters that slaves at the Dinsmore farm near Rabbit Hash Kentucky helped to make Catawba Wine. We also know that former enslaved of Madinsonville’s Freedmen community called Dunbar, helped Louis Cornuelle tend his Ives vineyards and make native Ives wine near where Mad Llama Coffeehouse stands today. We also know the most valuable and expensive enslaved man in northern Kentucky was one who knew how to spin hemp in a hemp walk. Spun hemp was required in pulley systems, sails, and anything that needed strong ties. We know that the slaves Jefferson and Tommy enslaved by the Tousey family, in whose abode the Tousey House Restaurant in Burlington, Kentucky, operates, manned the smokehouse. Their mother Lydia was their cook, who cooked Catskill Mountain food, not southern food, because she along with the Tousey’s were from Durham, New York.
My own family’s Thanksgiving corn pudding comes from a female slave recipe used at the Beaumont Inn in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. The corned pudding recipe itself was formulated by one of the staff of black female cooks, most of whom were former Bluegrass slaves or daughters thereof. That’s a common dynamic with legacy recipes in the south, especially those associated with old inns and hotels, whose cooking and even wait staff were African American. Those enslaved females and their daughters who cooked for large homes in the south found jobs post Civil War in the hospitality industry. This army of now unknown black women at the Beaumont were also known for dishes like their bourbon bread pudding, mock oyster casserole (eggplant and chopped freshwater clams), burgoo, and their famous General Robert E. Lee’s Orange Lemon cake.
So it’s important to give credit to the named and unnamed enslaved who brought us many of our iconic American foods.
The Centennial Pecan for starters, the first commercial pecan in America was grafted in the winter of 1846 at Oak Alley Plantation in St. James Parish, Louisiana, by slave Antoine. I’ve been to Oak Alley Plantation and they have the entire recreated slave village on site and are just starting to talk about Antoine and his pecans due to a book about his life published during the pandemic. Oak Alley Plantation is still very “Song of the South”-ey, Happy Slave Times, not portraying the horrors of slavery, but it’s a start.
Vanilla was cultivated by slave Edmund Albius on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean west of Madagascar. At age 12 in 1841 he developed a method to pollinate vanilla orchids quickly and profitably, that allows us to enjoy all vanilla flavors we take for granted.
Bourbon was brought to you by Elijah Craig’s enslaved master distiller Harry. Jack Daniels whiskey was brought to us by his slave master distiller Nathaniel “Nearest” Green, who taught Jack how to distill what would become the nation’s most popular brand of whiskey. Nearest was known as a skilled distiller who specialized in a process known as sugar maple charcoal filtering – also called the Lincoln County Process. This method – which some historians believe was inspired by the techniques of enslaved men and women who had used charcoal to filter their water and purify their foods in West Africa – gave Green’s whiskey a unique smoothness. Years later, Jack Daniel, a 7-year-old white orphan, was sent to the Call farm to be a chore boy. Eventually, he became Green’s apprentice and was taught the Lincoln County Process, which differentiates bourbon from Tennessee whiskey – making Nearest responsible for the Tennessee whiskey we know today
James Hemmings, Thomas Jefferson’s French trained chef, brought us the macaroni pie, or the grandfather of mac and cheese, as well as French fries. In 1813, James’ younger brother Peter learned the art of brewing, so Peter Hemings might be the first African American to make craft cider and craft beer.
Jefferson Davis Pie, brought to use by Aunt Jule Ann, an enslaved domestic of the Warren family of Dover, Missouri.
George Washington Carver, born into slavery in Diamond Grove, Missouri, brought us many forms of use of the African imported peanut. Although he didn’t invent peanut butter, he became its biggest cheerleader and also found 300 other uses for peanuts, making it an American cash crop. He worked alongside the three inventors of peanut butter, Marcellus Edson, John Harvey Kellogg, and Ambrose Straub to help establish peanut butter as a nutritious staple American ingredient now found in 97% of U.S. households.
Long grain Carolina rice was brought to us by slaves imported to the Carolinas with experience cultivating it in West Africa, particularly Madagascar. The enterprising enslaved also used leftover rice, or broken rice grains called “midlins” to grind into flour to make Carolina Rice Bread, still a regional favorite.
The sesame seed or bente, as it’s called in Bantu, the language of East Africa’s Madagascar, was brought to the South by slaves. The bente wafer, a favorite of Charleston is a classic food – maybe the first energy ‘bar’ – made by slaves and is now THE dipping cracker of cheese dips at a southern party in pimento cheese or Louisville Benedictine spread. Although we don’t have a particular name or person to attribute cultivation of sesame in the U.S. it was the enslaved who brought it from Africa and introduced it into American cuisine. The sesame seed can be found on the outside of the bun of the most iconic American food – the hamburger.
The same can be said for okra, the pepper pod looking, slimy vegetable used in creole gumbo. Gumbo is actually the West African word for the okra vegetable itself. Africans used it as a thickener in their shellfish and seafood stews and brought it with them to the U.S.
Fast food fried chicken was first brought to us by former enslaved of Gordonsville, Virginia. Reconstruction to hungry travelers. In the 1840s Gordonsville became a stop on the Alexandria and Virginia Central Railroads. Following the Civil War, the railroad continued to contribute to Gordonsville’s identity. It remained a rail stop even after ownership transferred to the Chesapeake & Ohio. It was at this time that Gordonsville earned the illustrious title of Chicken Capital of the World. There were no dining cars on trains back then and some shrewd African-American women spotted a business opportunity and seized it. This is when the chicken literally crossed the (rail)road. Virginia slaves typically raised their own chickens to supplant the meager rations of cornmeal, salt pork and lard that their owners bestowed them. They sometimes even sold their chickens to the owners to earn their own money. So fried chicken was something they made very well, as it was a common meal. When the African-American women heard the train coming, they would run out carrying platters of fried chicken on their heads and sell to the people on the train. The chicken was so good that passengers would wait until Gordonsville to eat and the route became known as the Chicken Bone Express. These enterprising, formerly enslaved women, were like the praline vendors of New Orleans, or the potlikker vendors of the Carolinas. They achieved rare degrees of financial independence in the post-Emancipation days. Many even bought and owned their own houses from selling fried chicken.
Barbeque is the heart and soul of Southern cuisine. Pork has been the reigning delicacy in the South for a very long time. Before refrigeration, most of the meat in Southerners’ diet was preserved, not fresh. As had been the practices for centuries all over the globe, meat was dried out with salt or, in some cases, pickled in order to safely store it for long periods of time. Southerners much preferred the taste of salted and smoked pork over pickled beef. Superior in preservation and taste, pork took the South by storm. By the eighteenth century, pork was served at almost every meal on most Southern tables and wealthy planters prided themselves on their smoked meat.
While pork barbeque was mainstream, enslaved people were the driving force behind the art of the barbeque and the core of today’s barbeque obsession: smoke and sauce. On plantations, slaves prepared and cooked the majority of the meat for planters’ tables. Slaves tasked with readying meat for the smokehouse faced a long and grueling regime of slaughtering and butchering the animals, salting the meat cuts, hanging the dried meat in the smokehouse, carefully keeping a low-burning fire under the meat for weeks, and then storing the smoked meat. Many of the innovations in curing techniques, including using different woods for different flavors, would likely have been initiated or executed by African-American hands.
While pork was a dominant food source for free white Southerners, enslaved people were even more reliant on pork as a meat source. Pork, along with corn, was the primary ration issued to slaves on many plantations. Some were even lucky enough to be allowed to raise their own hogs. Slaves, however, would usually be issued what was considered to be the lesser cuts of the hog, such as the feet, head, ribs, fatback, or internal organs. To hide the poor flavor of these cuts, enslaved people drew inspiration from traditional African cooking and used a powerful mixture of red pepper mixed with vinegar on their meat. West African cuisine relied heavily on the use of hot spices, and slaves continued this tradition by growing various peppers in their gardens to add to their dishes. Eventually, Southerners adopted this hot pepper-vinegar method of flavoring for all cuts of meat, and this combination still serves as the base for a large portion of barbeque and even Southern American-style hot sauces.
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